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I upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04LTS. I choose Ubuntu to have a secure system for 5 years. Unfortunately I don't wrote down all packages which get no longer updates from canonical like defoma. So I wonder how I could detect all such packages and remove them? Coming from Debian a command-line solution is preferred, but a GUI solution is acceptable.

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What do you mean by "unsupported"? not in the repos? No longer updated, but still in the repos? "Unsupported" could mean a hundred different things. – The Lord of Time May 6 '12 at 16:25
Hi defoma is one example. This comes originally from the canonical repositories in 11.11, but now they choose another tool. I will try to figure out the correct text tomorrow. Must see how I can get the text in English. The goal is to be sure to get security support for the next 5 years. All other packages are critical to me. As far as I know this is only for Main and Restricted promised. universe and multiverse not. – niels May 8 '12 at 7:33

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Every package that is in main and restricted appears to be supported, everything else not.

There are some aptitude query examples available; for a ppa-less install this should yield the currently supported list:

aptitude search "?not(?section(universe)) ?not(?section(multiverse)) ?installed"

However the easiest is to use synaptic, select installed and click on the column with the ubuntu icon. All the installed packages that no longer have this icon are not supported. You can also add a custom filter to synaptic that will achieve your goal.

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Packages in Universe and Multiverse are community supported. Therefore they're still considered 'supported', but by the Community. I think he means something else, perhaps we should wait for the answer to the question I asked to the OP in a comment? – The Lord of Time May 6 '12 at 16:43
He actually mentions '... updates from canonical ...' as exclusion criteria. That's hardly unspecific, methinks. – aquaherd May 6 '12 at 16:49
he should state that in his question, otherwise "supported" has several thousand different contexts. if he starts excluding universe and multiverse when that's not what he wants, then this answer isnt answering his question :P We can discuss the logistics later, but just wanting to make sure that's what he means :P – The Lord of Time May 6 '12 at 17:04
@aquaherd: I think this is what I need. I will try it tomorrow. – niels May 8 '12 at 7:35
aptitude search " (?section(universe) | ?section(multiverse)) ?installed" does what I wanted. Synaptic put some packages to Ubuntu even if they in universe which hasn't the support-option. What a little-bit wired is that libdvdcss2 only is listed by synaptic. Perhaps the not-approach is better, but I can't figure out how I can see from which section a package is. I tried aptitude search "?not(?section(main)) ?not(?section(restricted)) ?installed", but get to much packages as a result. – niels May 9 '12 at 19:48

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